Tuesday, August 31, 2010

I've had this sad, ugly little bench for a while now. I can't even remember how I came to have it in the first place. I actually tried to sell it in two different garage sales. Nobody would buy it. Have any idea why?

Could it be the ugly Raggedy Ann and Andy plus Teddy Bear plus daisy motif? (Apologies if you actually like that motif.) Well, it isn't exactly my cup of tea, but I like the size and shape of the little bench so I decided it needed a Nitty Gritty makeover. I looked around Mr. Nitty Gritty's man cave for some paint stripper, and lo and behold! What did I find?

Leftover aircraft paint stripper from that F-18 I garbage picked and re-painted Heirloom White. I kid, I kid. Don't ask where this stuff came from. Seriously. Don't ask. So I read the label and all it really warns me about is to not use it on landing gear. Well OK then! My bench does not qualify as landing gear, so I'm good to go!

So far, I'm pretty impressed with the job the aircraft coating stripper did on the bench. The wood survived and everything.

Once the yucky paint was long gone, I sprayed on a few coats of primer so it ended up looking like this:

So far, so good. After the primer dried, I painted it (you guessed it, Heirloom White, and I was pretty pleased with the results. But as I kept looking at it, I thought it was missing something. I wanted to distress it, but instead I decided to Mod Podge a piece of pretty scrap book paper on the back part of the bench. I think it turned out pretty cute:

Hey Lori! To answer your question I taped around the edes of the table top. Most of the liquid dripped over the edge but some did seep through the tape. So I didn't get a perfect edge but you really can't tell unless you look closely. I will tell you it's pretty messy- good luck!

Nitty Gritty Girl

Let's get dirty. Let use tools. Let's create, restyle, design, fall down, fail and try again. Let's make something out of nothing. Let's burn the candle at both ends. Let's switch it up and swap it out. LET'S DO IT!